BABYMETAL – “Live at Wembley”

Release: 2016-12-09
Label: Ear Music
Genre: Kawaii metal
Duration: 77:26

BABYMETAL live! Sometimes you can hear it

I love live albums! The music comes more to life, the musicians talk to the audience and – most importantly – they make mistakes. Of course, you mostly hear that when the singers do something wrong. Wrong text, the voice sounds different and sometimes they are nervous or something, so that you hear nuances in the vocals that you don’t hear on the album. It’s not that “flat”, not perfect. So for me, “Live at Wembley” by BABYMETAL is not a typical live album.

As the saying goes, the Japanese are perfectionists. They work on something and on themselves until it/they work(s) like a machine. So do BABYMETAL. Su-Metal and her two bandmates are perfect singers (and dancers) and you could use a metronom – I bet every concert sounds exactly the same. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not critizising the album or the band. Of course, it’s a proof of quality that the band definetly has, the three singers and the band. I have also been at a BABYMETAL concert and loved it!

“Live at Wembley” feels more like a best-of album, because BABYMETAL play a compilation of their albums “Babymetal” and “Metal Resistance”. The difference to the studio albums is that the instruments come out more powerfully, which fits the songs really well. And at the beginning of each song, sometimes also in the end, you can hear the audience cheering.

Some songs make the difference

There is one outstanding song, the first song I heard from BABYMETAL, named ‘Doki Doki Morning’. You can hear that it’s live because Su-Metal puts variations in her vocal lines and the stlye of her singing, PLUS you hear the audience during the song singing along with the band. Because of that I’d name the song the best one on “Live at Wembley”. In ‘Megitsune’, Moametal and Yuimetal also show that they aren’t machines – the vocals get to live! The whole song sounds more “real”, but not the same feeling like ‘Doki Doki Morning’.

Towards the end of the album, BABYMETAL loose the perfectionism mentioned. ‘Karate’ is another proof that the three girls can be a real live band – not only acting like they trained it. That makes them much more likeable and the music experiences soul and spirit. I love it! But for the last couple of songs, BABYMETAL falls back into acting perfect. It’s a nice gesture that they sing their English song ‘The One’, though.

After the last song ‘Road of resistance’, BABYMETAL even talk to the audience. It’s not that bad that we don’t hear them talking during the rest of the concert – in the end, this is not theatre. After all, the band plays a metal concert and should more often act like this. However, it’s great fun to listen to “Live at Wembley” and I’d love to go to another BABYMETAL concert soon!

Have you ever been at a BABYMETAL concert? How do you like “Live at Wembley”? Will you give it to someone as a Christmas present? Tell us in the comments!